


The Miracle at Brookwine Field

by kristophine



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Brief Description of War Violence, Historical AU, M/M, and Natasha was the queen of Scotland, and Tony was the king of England, it's what would happen if there were monsters and magic in medieval Wales okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 16:14:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14897831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kristophine/pseuds/kristophine
Summary: “Steven—”“Bucky—”said Steven, probably to irritate James.“Come on. You know—”“There are two thousand of them, you have to negotiate.” The court wizard had saidat least two thousand,sweating nervously; the scrying glass wasn’t always reliable, but it sounded very likely.“The hell I do.” James slammed his fist onto the table, making the mugs of ale jump. “This isn’t Canterbury. He has no rights here.”





	The Miracle at Brookwine Field

**Author's Note:**

> You can't blame anyone but me for this, because I watched like nine hours of documentaries while sick and bored.

“Steven—”

“ _Bucky_ —” said Steven, probably to irritate James.

“Come on. You know—”

“There are _two thousand_ of them, you have to negotiate.” The court wizard had said _at least two thousand,_ sweating nervously; the scrying glass wasn’t always reliable, but it sounded very likely.

“The hell I do.” James slammed his fist onto the table, making the mugs of ale jump. “This isn’t Canterbury. He has no rights here.”

“But your men do,” said Steven. “Five to one, Bucky.”

“ _Lord James._ ”

Steven rolled his eyes. “Fine, _Lord_ James. You have four hundred men. Should you lead them against the Iron Lord, you’ll lose them their lives.”

“And if I _don’t_ fight him, what then? He burns Brookwine to the ground.”

“He’s not burned a town since—”

“What do I care, _since?_ I care that he did it! Killianborough was in ashes when he left.”

“And Lord Killian was a right bastard, which is probably why.”

“There’s Lord Wilson to the East—”

“It’s too late to get a messenger to Sam and you know it.”

“What would you have me do, Steven?” James rubbed at his face. It had been a long day since the Iron Lord’s troops had been spotted, and they were down to a matter of hours before the soldiers arrived. The Brookwine troops were mustering as fast as they could, but pulling peasants off the land was slow going, so the bulk of what they had would be the small core of knights and what noblemen were with them. “I can’t surrender. We’re loyal to the Red Queen.”

“Natasha would—”

“Natasha would have me drawn and quartered and you know it.” James sighed, closing his eyes. “I took my oath. I knew what it meant.”

“Five to one if we’re lucky,” said Steven quietly. “The terrain is as bad for us as it is for him.”

“He’s the one who wants to fight, we can do it in the bogs as well as anywhere.”

They sat silent for a moment.

“There’s no way out of this one, Steven.” James reached across the table and cupped the back of Steven’s neck. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll fight for you.” Steven’s eyes drifted closed. “You know that.”

“Aye.”

“I’ll see to the men.”

“Thank you.” James squeezed gently and then let Steven go.

Steven, leaving the council chamber, crossed through a sunbeam falling through the dust-laden air, and for a moment he was alight—his hair gold, his coat of mail shining like silver. He was as handsome a picture of a knight as any king’s favorite.

Not that James was a king. James was a baron of the Red Queen, the hellion who’d taken all the North and most of the West, but the Iron Lord still had his string of military victories in the East and the South since the death of the False King Pierce, and if the Iron Lord could take the land it would be his by right.

James lowered his eyes to the table. The map made it painfully obvious: two thousand men to four hundred, on perilous ground, with no hope of relief.

Brookwine would burn, but he’d make the bastard pay for the privilege.

 

Steven knelt in the chapel. He couldn’t afford a long vigil, but a few minutes to clear his head wouldn’t go amiss. The stained glass—Bucky’s pride and joy, brought back from the Continent—rained glorious colored light down upon him, running like water across the stones of the floor.

If he was going to die fighting, better for Natasha and his homeland than any of the other causes for which he could die. He’d come to know the Queen well on her last campaign to the Marches, when James had earned the grant of his family’s land, given back after fifteen years in the grip of the False King.

James had been a baron’s third son when he and Steven met as children, and no one had cared much about the fast friendship they’d devised. Then James’ family was removed from power, father and brothers slaughtered in the fighting, Steven’s impoverished noble father dead on the field, and no one cared at all.

They’d been each other’s family. They had learned to fight and then they’d learned war, and when the Red Queen came to them, they’d been battle-hardened a hundred times, a matched pair of knights of horseback, one dark and one fair. There was a lay about them in the North. They’d brought down three dragons together; Steven’s idea to trick them into blasting each other.

When the False King fell, the country had already been in shambles for months. The Red Queen swept down out of the North like a storm, adding to her territories, her knights in tow. It was beginning to look like her land would reclaim its old borders under her.

Steven liked her, so he’d fought for her; more importantly, _James_ had liked her, and where James fought, Steven would, too.

The False King had been cunning, devious, and cruel. The Red Queen was far better for the people. She ruled like the Romans had, more by proxies and taxes than the sword. She kept her sword for where it was needed.

He was half in a trance when someone entered; he heard nothing at first. Then there was a hand on his shoulder, and he started up, whirling with his knife half-drawn.

The woman smirked at him as he took a step back from her. Her hair was long and crimson, loose and wild, and for a fraction of a second he thought she was Natasha, but no.

“Who _are_ you?” he asked.

“Steven of Grant,” she said. Her voice sounded like a thousand smaller voices, blurring into one. “I am the Scarlet Witch.”

He frowned at her. “I know nothing of this.”

She laughed at him, like the sound of a hive of bees. “I have come with a vision for you.”

Before he could say, _No, thank you,_ she had reached out; red light crept between her fingers like a spider’s web and then floated free to embrace him, and the next thing he knew he was _there,_ on the battlefield, the cacophony of soldiers fighting around him. Knights on horseback unseated, falling among the infantrymen, to be unceremoniously disposed of. The smells of blood and mud, sweat and shit—oh, no. Oh, no.

Bucky, Lord James, the Baron of Brookwine, facing the faceless Iron Lord, whose armor was painted a hard, bright red; Bucky shouting something over the noise of the battle that Steven couldn’t hear, and then the Iron Lord’s lance flashing brightly.

Bucky, falling from his horse. The Iron Lord reining up next to where he’d fallen, lifting the mace.

 _No,_ he tried to say, but it was useless. Bucky was dead. Bucky was dead, and as he tried to cut his way through the fighting to Bucky’s side, his heart hammering, all he could see was the arc of the mace coming down.

He reached them; he looked down to see Bucky’s helm well off and lying beside him, muddied in the trampled earth, and Bucky’s empty eyes under a skull now the wrong shape, bits of white gleaming through the blood and hair in the sunlight. He looked up to the Iron Lord.

The Iron Lord raised his visor. His eyes, meeting Steven’s, were not unkind.

“Your lord is dead,” said the Iron Lord. “Surrender and serve me, and this battle ends.”

“No,” said Steven, lifting his sword, knowing that his death had come to take him, too. The mace swung out.

 

He jerked back into the chapel with a gasp, like falling into cold water. The witch stood beside him still. He touched his head to find that it was whole.

“Why have you done this thing?” he demanded of her. “Is it not enough that we must die once, but you must have us die twice?”

“What would you give to avoid it?”

He stared at her, and then he threw back his head and roared with laughter. “This is how the Devil comes to take my soul? In the form of a pretty woman? Oh, you have misjudged me, Lucifer.”

She snorted mockingly. “Your gods and demons are meaningless to me. I care for this land because it was my brother’s.”

“Your brother?”

“He who was the Silver Prince.”

“Oh,” said Steven. The Silver Prince had been a man of legendary speed. He was widely reckoned to be supernatural, and he had never lost a battle, until the False King slew his father the true king, and at the same banquet poisoned the prince and all rightful heirs.

“He loved this stupid place.” She spit to the side, onto the chapel floor. “For all its pointless wars and petty bullshit. He grew up here, and I was at the nunnery until they knew me for a witch. And now he is gone from me, and this land is what I have left of him.”

“The Scarlet Witch,” said Steven slowly. “You were the daughter of the old king.”

“I was.”

“Princess Wanda?”

“I was.”

He knelt to her then. “Forgive me, my lady.”

She clucked her tongue. “Stand up. I asked you what you would do to preserve your life and the life of your love.”

“My—”

“I know your worthless god. I asked what I asked. I will not say the words again.”

“Anything but my soul,” said Steven. “Anything that is mine to give.”

“Would you give your body, and suffer in agony?”

“Yes.”

“Good, because you’re going to,” she muttered, and then she lifted both her hands to the skies and brought them down, right there in the church nave, and he fell to the ground in a muddle of confused light: unsure what light was from the stained glass, and what light crackled from her hands or behind his eyelids. Her heard her invoke a name, and then she held a cup to his lips and he drank.

The agony was a tunnel of horror and he crossed through it.

When he came to himself again, he was shaking and sweating. His armor felt strange; when he looked down at himself he saw that in places it had split.

The armorer was going to _kill_ him.

“You won’t need it again,” said the Scarlet Witch. “You cannot be pierced by sword. Well, not _much._ ”

“Wait, what?” Steven’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth.

“Arise.”

It took some time to stand. He felt as if he had run leagues carrying a sack full of stones on his back, but his strength began to come back to him, seeping in like water into sand.

The chapel looked different, he thought, and then realized that was because he was looking at it from a different angle. He had not been accounted short among the knights, but now he was a giant. He looked down at himself again; he had split his mail shirt, and his cuirass gave a disgruntled creak before falling to the floor with a clatter.

“What,” he said, not able to make it even a question.

“You are as a champion of old.” Her eyes glittered with that unholy light. “You will preserve this land, for your lord and love, and for your queen and for my brother. That is the bargain.”

“I will.” Steve flexed his hand, staring down at it. It was the size of a half-ham.

“You have strength and speed. You will heal much faster. Don’t get your head chopped off, and give the Iron Lord hell for me.” She glared at him and added, “And do it fast, because he’s coming.”

She was gone when next he looked up. Then the shouting started that signaled that the men had seen the Iron Lord’s troops.

There was no time.

 

Steven discarded what he could of the broken armor and kept what he could that still fit—his greaves barely buckled. After a moment’s consideration he realized that he looked ridiculous, half-in and half-out of armor, and he chucked the lot of it and went straight down to where the men were gathering in the courtyard. At least his tunic had been made with room to spare. He’d need new hose, even; the back had ripped clean out.

They parted ranks for him, breathless in awe. Thank God they still knew him. His face, he thought, was the same.

“Men,” he said, and had to pause to clear his throat. “I have been blessed this day, but I am still your own Steven of Grant, and if you will follow me into battle, we shall make the Iron Lord feel the cost of going to war against the Red Queen and her loyal men. Should the price be life, I am willing to bear that, and I know that you are, as well. Will you follow me and your Lord James, for Brookwine the beautiful, for the Red Queen who has freed you, and for your own kin?”

A ragged cheer went up and gained strength. There was no time to explain, and in the end it seemed no explanation was needed. They believed in miracles, after all. Steven had to make a quick trip to the armorer; his squire was ready with his sword and his shield, but was near to tears about the rest of it.

Bucky was coming out, getting ready to lead the men, and there was no time to see him or talk to him. Steven wasn’t even certain what to _say_ about an encounter in a church with an eldritch woman who turned one into a giant.

The armorer had nothing even close to his new size. He had a bit of leather to wear, but would have to do without the armor. He made a point of getting something a _little_ more comfortable to wear on his lower half before he climbed on his horse, though.

 

His sword felt odd and clumsy in his fingers at first, but he had no real time to get used to it before their forces clashed. He brought his shield up against a volley of arrows, wheeling his horse to jockey towards a knot at the thick of the fighting.

Bucky was distant, shouting to the troops. Steven turned his head, and in that second someone knocked him with a lance and he went off his horse.

It was an easier fall without his armor, but it still left him on the ground, at real risk of being trampled. So he got to his feet, and felt a surge of strength come through him—he had hung on to his shield in the fall, and he still had his sword.

He began to fight in earnest.

He found it almost bafflingly light work. He had trained hard for years upon years, fought well in many battles, and yet now his muscles moved for him with a speed and an ease he had never experienced, except perhaps in dreams. It was simple to block all blows with his shield—not merely some, not only arrows, but _all._ And his bright sword lashed out around him over and over like the teeth of a snake, biting into the soldiers of the Iron Lord.

Panic began to fill their eyes. They had been told nothing of a huge blond beast, much less a man who stood taller than the full six feet of Lord James. Steven fought without armor yet took no scratch; he had begun to mow them down in clusters. Chaos began, originating in the soldiers around where he stood, and it spread outward from them. None who came up against him left the fight alive.

And then he looked up to see, as in his evil vision, far from him in the center of the field, Bucky and the Iron Lord, closing upon each other.

Without thought, he lifted his shield. He threw it with all his new-made might.

It caught the Iron Lord’s helmet and took him clean off his horse.

That was the moment when the Iron Lord’s forces unraveled. Steven had seemed supernatural; now their lord was fallen. Within a few minutes, the clash had quieted.

At last, Bucky dismounted his horse with the help of men near to him, and he went to where the Iron Lord lay. As Steve struggled to get closer to them, he could see Bucky lift the Iron Lord’s visor.

Steve burst into the small circle of men standing around the fallen king.

“He lives,” Bucky said to Steven, without looking up. “What say you?”

“He would have killed you where you lay.”

“Aye.” Bucky didn’t dispute it. “But shall he die, or be my captive?”

“Captive, he is a danger. Dead, he is not.”

“And yet,” said Bucky quietly. “I wonder what you would have me do.”

Steven looked away and then back to meet Bucky’s eyes, furious with himself for his answer, but he gave it nonetheless. “He has been merciful to our men. I would spare him, and have him captive, and all the dangers therewith.”

“I thought as much.” Bucky stood tall again and then said, “Jesus Christ, what the hell happened to you?”

“Made a deal with a witch.”

Bucky smacked the back of his head. “Don’t _do_ that! We need to get you to a priest.”

They looked out over the battlefield together. There were the dead, scores of them, but more wearing the Iron Lord’s colors than the Brookwine colors—many, many more.

“My God,” said Bucky wonderingly. “We won.”

“That we did.”

“We captured—oh my God.” Bucky was starting to go pale. “We captured the _king_ and you made a deal with a witch. Steven, you are more trouble than an oiled pig.”

“I’m not taking it back. I like this body.” Steven flexed a bicep; after all those sword blows, he wasn’t even _sore._ “I’m going to say it was a miracle.”

“Your _immortal soul,_ Steven,” said Bucky, despairing.

“I told her that was off the table.”

“And you trusted a _witch?_ ”

“Hey, she wasn’t just any witch! She was the Princess Wanda.”

“I thought she was dead!”

“I think they told people she was dead after the nuns figured out she was a witch.”

“Ah.” Bucky shrugged; that was the kind of nonsense nobility tended to when it came to witches. “Anyway, we should get the Iron Lord into a cell somewhere and figure out what the hell to do with his troops. We can’t kill them and we can’t feed them.”

“March them up to the Red Queen, she’ll find work for them.”

“How about _have the wizard send a message_ to the Red Queen and remind her I’m still loyal before she gets worried that I’m getting too big for my britches.”

“See, that feels personal.”

“It is personal! What _are_ you wearing for britches, anyway? You’re mad! You’ve gone mad.”

Steven grinned at Bucky—for the first time in his life, eye to eye, rather than looking up at him. “You’re just upset that I’m finally taller than you.”

Bucky rolled his eyes expressively. “We need to _do_ something about this, Steven. Are you going to help me?”

Steven bent down, picked up the Iron Lord, and slung him across his shoulders like a deer. The Iron Lord groaned in protest.

“Hey,” Steven called over his shoulder as he turned back toward the castle, “can somebody get my shield?”

 

There was a feast that night. It was probably ill-advised, given that there were still about a thousand of the Iron Lord’s troops now encamped and waiting for orders—without their lord, they _had_ no other allegiance. He’d taken what must have seemed like a small risk in marching out with them personally, but with the magical intervention, the risk had been rather larger than he’d known. Hundreds had died and hundreds more had immediately fled, but the others had no compelling home, and were just as happy to be absorbed into the Red Queen’s army.

There’d be jockeying in the capital as soon as the nobles realized the Iron Lord was captive, and someone would try to take his place. The Red Queen would need to act fast.

James would have to start marching them tomorrow. He’d need to send someone with them to make sure they _got_ there, but the court wizard had shouted into his scrying ball about the situation and once it had sunk in for Natasha’s court wizard that he was _serious,_ Natasha had promised to send them orders by morning.

“Why didn’t my wizard get _me_ a body like that?” muttered James to Steven, who sat at his right hand in hastily cobbled-together clothing.

“The witch is more powerful,” said Steven breezily. “I must attract a better brand of magician.”

“Or she really _was_ the Devil.”

“I told her the Devil would know better than to come for me as a _woman._ ” Steven chuckled—he had been drinking wine all night, but seemed fully sober still.

“I’m the lord, here.” James looked down into his cup of wine. “I can’t do as I please.”

“I know.”

“If I could—”

“I know.”

James took a drink of the wine. “I’ll need to wed soon to secure the land.”

“What would you have me say?” Steven put his back against the back of the chair, looking stiff, a bit angry. The expression soured James’s stomach. “I know what must be as well as you.”

James bowed his head. “I’m sorry.” An apology from a lord was no small thing, and Steven’s face softened with it.

“In the morning,” said James, “we’ll see what the Queen wants.”

 

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” shouted Bucky at the court wizard, who hastily bent his head back to the crystal ball and spoke loudly at it in an arcane language before turning his head to press his ear to the stone.

“No,” said the court wizard, “that’s definitely what they said. The Red Queen will wed you, and you’re to march with your leman and the Iron Lord to the Widow’s Castle for the ceremony.”

“Am I permitted to decline the _honor?_ ”

The wizards conferred briefly. “No,” said his court wizard. “She says not to worry, she won’t make you—” The wizard hesitated, glancing back at the ball. “She won’t make you give up your leman.”

“Does _anybody_ care that I’m not his leman?” asked Steven of the room at large, but since it was just the two of them and the court wizard, the answer appeared to be no.

“She needs an heir, and you’re holding the Iron Lord, who’s been her major competition. So she wants the Iron Lord as hostage and she wants you as a consort to start consolidating her power.”

“That ruthless, demented woman,” marveled Bucky out loud. “Don’t say that to them!”

“I would never, my lord.”

“Tell them…” Bucky sighed and scrubbed at his face with his hand. “Tell them it is my great honor to accept.”

 

They closeted themselves with the few local nobles who would be capable of holding the castle _and_ willing to give it back when they returned. James broke the news. Everyone thought it sounded completely insane, and also like a pretty solid idea.

“Well, can’t say as I imagined Brookwine being of any real importance,” said Cawthor, “but it is nice to have a champion around the place again. Haven’t had a man of impossible strength since, oh, your great-grandfather’s time. What was his name? Thorne? Thor?”

“I’m marching as soon as I can get the men together,” said James. “I have no _idea_ what her plan is for Brookwine, but can I entrust it to you?”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Cawthor waved the question away impatiently. His son, a teenager with intelligent eyes, watched him and nodded. “I held the castle for your father, didn’t I? I can do it again. Just don’t piss off any mad kings. That damn bastard loved his sieges.”

“We should be back in weeks, if we ride with the men up to Widow’s Castle and then ride back alone after the ceremony.”

“Good luck with that,” said Cawthor. “Ten to one she ropes you into helping _run_ the business.”

“She didn’t while I was on campaign with her!”

“You hadn’t captured any kings then.”

James looked off into space, struck and alarmed.

“But I _like_ Brookwine,” he said, a bit sadly. Steven gave him a couple of great thumping pats on the back.

“I’m sure she’ll let you visit,” Steven said sympathetically.

 

After the advisers left, Steven said, “Bucky—”

“Steven—”

“If she already _thinks_ I’m your leman and she doesn’t _care_ —”

_“Steven—”_

“Why not—”

And when Steven put it like that, there was a certain sense to the idea. It wasn’t like they’d never—but not since they were—not since James had gotten his family’s lands back.

“You’re going to be the consort of the Red Queen,” said Steven, “that’s enough for _anyone,_ you don’t need to worry about pleasing some local high-born so you can wed his daughter. You could, _we_ could—”

“You’re right,” said James, and in the quiet amidst the draperies and the table with its war map, he kissed his Steven again, as he’d longed to since that first day he knelt before the Red Queen and arose made _Lord of Brookwine._


End file.
